Political Unrest Makes Me Want to Talk About Food

Dieutha is in labor.  Normally I'd get Hudson down for a nap and head over to Heartline to help some of my favorite girl peeps, but today is one of those days in Haiti.

Helicopters flying low in the sky. The UN is asking their nonessential employees to go home at 2 today.

Last week the Haitian ladies at Heartline were telling us that all the machetes in Port-au-Prince are gone.  Sold.   Bought up.  "If Martelly does not win, they will start slaughtering people."  If I had just gotten off the plane, that would have made me instantly sweaty.  Instead...it made me start to feel sweaty, but then I remembered that nothing here is as it seems.  Nothing.

Today I read a real-life article that said the same kind of junk about the dang machetes.  Machete.  Such a funny word.  Prior to moving to Haiti I probably said the word machete all of one time.  Not much machete talk in my home town.  Here my kids own wooden machetes.  They try to make up jobs they could have when they grow up where they could wield a machete for a living.  "Play with your machete outside."  "Hudson hit me in the face with a machete."  "Madame...your son is hitting the flowers with a machete."  All weird parts of our weird life. 

Why all the commotion?  There is supposed to be a political announcement at 5:00 tonight.  Which means the announcement either won't happen at all today, or will happen at some other random time today.  Why do we still assign times to things here?  That's funny. 

Those awful helicopters are still buzzing around the sky.  Like locusts.  I hate them.  I want to go be with Dieutha and my favorite birthing team.  I'm pouty.  And a tad bit nervous.  So you know what that means...

It's time to talk about food.  You saw that coming right?

When there's riot talk I turn into a squirrel who packs away nuts for the winter.  Except I don't collect nuts.  I buy a stupid amount of eggs.  It's bizarre.

To distract myself from the helicopters and twitter updates I thought it would be fun to pass along some of our favorite recipes.  I haven't done that in awhile.  Most of these are from Pioneer Woman.  That's because we're best friends who have never met.  That's perfectly normal.  What?  Don't shake your head at me.  I said.  It's perfectly normal.

Eating in Haiti is different.  Options are slim for eating out, so that's not even a temptation for us.  I don't think we've eaten out as a family in Haiti one time since we got back from the States at Christmas.  We have found that either the restaurants are gross or really nice, but too expensive.  Most restaurants have a unique take on customer service.  They think you should be grateful to be eating at their restaurant.  Just being there should be enough for you.  That means with four goof-ball kids, one meal can take 2.5 hours. SHOOT. ME. NOW.  One of the restaurants in Haiti where we've eaten is on a second story balcony.  After 2.5 hours at the dinner table with our four kids, crappy service, everyone getting their food at random times, not getting what we ordered, I was about to throw myself over the ledge.  No joke.   I'm sure I need to quit being so American and embrace the culture when it comes to dining out, but I'm going to work on that after I don't have a whacky two year old.  Okay?

So we stay home and eat cereal.  It's way better.  Then we can give our cereal boxes to the Apparent Project.  Win.  Win.

I do cook, but I don't cook every night.  Lots of nights are oatmeal nights...cereal nights...sandwiches...leftovers.  Food is expensive here, and people all around us are malnourished.  So most of the time we don't make a big deal about food.

But...

I have five males in this house.  All of them love food.  They eat like a bunch of fatties.  Their love language is definitely a hot cooked meal.  That's probably good for me, since I'm pretty sure if I didn't have a family, I could live entirely on cereal, banana smoothies, and vanilla yogurt.

Even though cooking and cleaning and buying groceries is a big huge pain in the butt in this country, I know it's important to our kids.  So when I do cook, I try to make it something they love.  (It took me four hours last Saturday to go to the grocery store and the produce market.  see.  pain. in. the. butt.)

Here are some of our recent favorite recipes.  We eat lots of other stuff that doesn't have a cool recipe link.  Mostly pasta with veggies, stirfrys, soups, and more soups.  But the ones I'm listing below are real recipes...not my usual, throw everything together and go with it kind of cooking.

{{Breakfast}}

We still adore these pancakes.  The banana/cinnamon ones.  Yes.  Adore them.  But I never cook them for breakfast.  I'm not that cool or coherent in the mornings.  We eat them for dinner.  Without bacon.  Because even though there are giant, random pigs walking all over my hood, the bacon at the store costs a buh-jillion-million dollars.   After we eat pancakes for dinner, we eat them for breakfast the next morning.  Can that count?

{{Lunch}}

Egg salad sandwiches on fresh crescents from the bakery around the corner topped with lettuce and garden-fresh tomatoes.  Delish.  Don't knock egg salad until you try this egg salad.  This egg salad has cream cheese in it.  Unbelievable!  I used to think egg salad was for grannies, and that paprika was a placebo or a joke.  Now I know that egg salad is for me, and paprika...well....I'm still not sure what it's for, but I use it.  Oh.  And.  I don't make this for lunch either.  I make it for dinner.  Then we eat it for lunch the rest of the week if we want.  Fine.  I'll just get it out there.  I never cook breakfast or lunch.  So why don't we just move along to dinner?

{{Dinner}}

 photo credit:  Pioneer Woman

Pioneer Woman's Easy Mulligatawny
This soup has apples in it.  Almost kept me from making it.  That and the fact that apples are $1 each here.  I really don't know why I decided to try this.  I really don't.  I'm not usually adventurous that way.  But I'm glad I did.  This is hands-down our family's favorite meal right now.  They ask for it every week.  "Mom, will you make apple soup and homemade bread?"  Yes.  I will.  For you.  I will. (I substitute coconut milk for the half and half.  Coconut milk is cheap in Haiti.  Half and half will cost you your first born son.  I also boil a whole chicken, use the white meat, and the broth for this recipe.)

photo credit:  Pioneer Woman

Pioneer Woman's Meatballs
We eat this with mashed potatoes, candied carrots, and homemade bread.  The carrots in Haiti are the bomb dot com.  I make a ton of these meatballs.  My family eats them until they explode.  Well.  Almost explode.  They eat them until the only thing left to do is throw themselves on the couch and mouth breathe.  It's disturbing.

I make enough to have for later in the week.  That's when I whip the leftovers out of the refrigerator, throw them in a skillet, pour some marinara sauce over them to make...meatball subs.

Confession:  I eat cereal on meatball sub night and my kids eat dinner shirtless.

This meatball recipe is a recipe that won't quit giving.  I also use it to make meatloaf.  I mix up the ingredients in the meatball recipe, put it in a loaf pan, and then use the topping Pioneer Woman suggests in her actual meatloaf recipe.  I prefer to use the meatball recipe for the meatloaf because it's easier and it doesn't contain eggs.  That way, Hayden can eat the meatloaf and keep breathing.  I try to be a good mom that way.

Indian Chicken Curry
I don't have a photo, but it doesn't mean we don't love this stuff.  Yum.  We add cooked potatoes and carrots to the mixture and eat it meatless a lot of times.  I also add more coconut milk, seasonings, yogurt and tomato paste to compensate for the fact that I add lots of potatoes and carrots.

  photo credit:  Food Network

Rachel Ray's Sloppy Joes
Yum.  Easy.  On fresh bread from the bakery around the corner...these are so delish.  I use tomato paste and water instead of tomato sauce.  We just like it better that way.  I chop the onions microscopically small and leave out the red pepper.  I'd rather not have world war three at dinner.  From Aaron.  And the kids.  But mostly Aaron.  We eat sloppy joes with baked potato fries.   For fries...peel potatoes.  Slice them into fry size.  Cover with olive oil.  Season them with garlic powder, lots of salt, rosemary and thyme.  Bake on 400 for about 40 minutes.  Smells so good when they are cooking.  Cooking these makes us even sweatier than we normally are.  The fries smell good, but the increased sweatyness stinks.

Manitoba soup (From my sweet friend Kirby).

1 pound ground beef

28 oz. petitie diced tomatos

medium onion-diced

medium green pepper diced

1 onion soup mix packet (I didn't have this so I just used a bunch of onion salt, garlic powder and a little bit of celery salt)

small can of tomato paste (either 6 or 8 oz can)

1 c. carrots

1/2 c. celery

2 c. potatoes

1/2 tsp. basil

1 tsp. salt and paprika

1 tbsp. sugar

Brown ground beef and then add the pepper and onion and brown 5 more minutes.  Add 4 cups of water, soup mix, and remainder of ingredients except for carrots and potatoes.  Let simmer 30 minutes.  Then add potatoes and carrots and simmer for another 30 minutes.

{{Appetizers}}

Scratch that.  

If I was single, all I'd eat would be cereal, banana smoothies, vanilla yogurt, and appetizers.

Jalapeno Hummus

Paula Deen's Black Bean Salsa

Pioneer Woman's Restaurant Style Salsa

Pioneer Woman's Pineapple Mango Salsa

Oh.  And.  Fine.  We eat appetizers for our dinner too sometimes.  If you have not eaten salsa for supper, you have not truly lived!  

{{Breads}}

Buttery Cornbread

Easy Homemade White Bread
 
Pioneer Woman's Tortillas

 photo credit:  my friend, Mandi

Mandi's Whole Wheat Tortillas (These are so yum.  I can only get whole wheat flour half the time here, so when I have it...I make these.)

Oh...and let's not leave out the bugs.  I sift everything.  Because if not...uh...well...we'd have extra protein in most of our food.  Sick.

 See that?  It's a bug.  Just one though.  Usually there are more.  One bug in one cup of flour equals a good cooking day in Haiti.

I swear.  Nine months ago.  I was normal.

Do you have any favorite, totally-rocked-your-world winner recipes you've tried lately?  Leave the link in the comments section.  I'm sure other people would like to try them.  And...surely, if enough people comment, there will be a few recipes listed that I could find the ingredients for in Haiti.  Surely.  Right?  Surely?